Users of the World Wide Web distributed computing environment may freely send and retrieve data across long distances and between remote computing devices. The Web, implemented on the Internet, presents users with documents called “web pages” that may contain information as well as “hyperlinks” which allow the users to select and connect to related web sites. The web pages may be stored on remote computing devices, or servers, as hypertext-encoded files. The servers use Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or other protocols to transfer the encoded files to client users. Many users may remotely access the web sites stored on network-connected computing devices from a personal computer (PC) through a browser application running on the PC.
The browser application may act as an interface between user PCs and remote computing devices and may allow the user to view or access data that may reside on any remote computing device connected to the PC through the World Wide Web and browser interface. Typically, the local user PC and the remote computing device may represent a client and a server, respectively. Further, the local user PC or client may access Web data without knowing the source of the data or its physical location and publication of Web data may be accomplished by simply assigning to data a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that refers to the local file. To a local client, the Web may appear as a single, coherent data delivery and publishing system in which individual differences between other clients or servers may be hidden.
A system may provide web site proprietors with web site user demographics information and is generally described in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/080,946, “DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION GATHERING AND INCENTIVE AWARD SYSTEM AND METHOD” to Bistriceanu et al., the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. Generally, the system may include users, web site proprietors, and an enterprise system hosting a central web site. The users may register with the central web site and may earn “points” for performing specific on- or off-line tasks in exchange for disclosing their demographic information during registration. The users may then redeem their earned points at participating proprietors for merchandise or services. Generally, the central web site manages the system by performing a number of tasks including: maintaining all user demographic information, tracking user point totals, and awarding points according to specific, proprietor-defined rules. Proprietors may effectively market their products or services to specific users based on the provided demographic information.
In a demographic information gathering and incentive award system, marketers may desire to use e-mail messages to reach a minimum number of potential customers during a bulk e-mail campaign or test. E-mail is an effective means of sending advertisements to consumers and other users.
However, the use of e-mail messages as a medium is not without its limitations relative to advertising using web pages. Because most e-mail viewing clients, such as web clients including Yahoo Mail and Gmail, and non-web clients such as Microsoft Outlook, prohibit JavaScript or plug-ins from executing within the context of viewing an e-mail message, many of the techniques used to enrich and personalize the user experience in a web page are not typically possible in the context of an e-mail message. An e-mail message may be formatted in the form of an HTML e-mail, which may include images (including animated images) arranged in a two-dimensional layout along with text of various fonts and colors. The e-mail message may also include one or more links (each link having as an attribute a “URI”) which, upon clicking, take the user to some destination on the World Wide Web. A person viewing the e-mail message may activate the links by clicking on text and/or by clicking on an image within the e-mail message.
Aside from the restriction of JavaScript and plug-ins, there is the additional limitation that the HTML content of an e-mail message is static (i.e., it does not change after transmission from the e-mail server). This may limit the effectiveness of an advertising campaign employing e-mail messages, for example, where the e-mail message is time-limited (e.g., where a particular advertisement or offer expires). In particular, it is commonly known that when displaying one offer or promotion near the top of the e-mail message (which is the first part typically viewed by a user), and displaying another offer or promotion near the bottom of the e-mail message, a viewer of the e-mail message is far more likely to respond to the offer near the top. Thus, the ability to present different offers (e.g., in rotation or dynamically selected based on criteria that may vary after composition, transmission, and delivery of the e-mail message) near the top of the e-mail message may improve the effectiveness of the e-mail message. While JavaScript or plug-ins would make this type of enhancement easy in the context of a web page, this is not usually possible in the context of an e-mail message.